Wheels That Heal

by Greg Myer

This "How It Was Done" is an update on Larry Nicholas' car. Much of the build has been discussed in
three earlier BritishV8 articles:
Part One,
Part Two, and
Part Three.

After this conversion was almost completed the first time, Larry wanted to finish it up. Instead, he
had serious heart health issues. The car sat. Against strong advice, Larry covered it with a
rubber tarp. The heart problems caused depression, and Larry just didn't care to do more with the
MGB at that time.

Several years went by and I wanted to help, so we made arrangements to get the car back and
complete it. It took a lot of work but it was worth it! I think the results speak for themselves.
Everyone who has driven it loves it and wants one. At the recent
Endless Summer Cruisin' event,
here in Ocean City, MD it drew a crowd wherever it went. It was the smallest car we saw cruising around.
At the "Wheels That Heal" show in Salisbury, MD.
many people wanted to know what it was and how it was done. (We refered them to BritishV8.org, of course.)

Since the three previous articles, I've built and installed a custom roll structure. I had S&W Race Cars
of Spring City, PA bend the dual main hoops from DOM (i.e. seamless "drawn over mandrel") tubing.
When I received the hoops a few days later, I welded the foot plates on and notched some tubing for
braces and a crosspiece. It was all designed to fit under the MGB's convertible top. I think this
design might work better than some others in the event of a rollover because it attachs to
the MGB's unibody bodyshell in six different locations. I hope we never find out!

The camshaft selection just makes this engine. It idles at 650rpm in gear when warm with a nice lope.
It pulls from idle all the way through the RPM range to 5000rpm and more. The rebuilt C4 with its
secret recipe torque converter works better than any automatic I ever drove. Pulling the shifter into 1st
and flooring it will smoke the tires. You need to feather the throttle for traction. Once it
grabs, you just hang on until you slap it into 2nd. The transmission will stay in gear until you
shift it, unlike many automatics that shift into 2nd at a programed RPM no matter what you do to
hold it in 1st.

We applied Bill Guzman's traction conrtol modification and it works great. No wheel hop
ever! You can read all about that here: Easy Traction.

The exhaust exits four feet from the driver's ear, so we wanted mufflers that weren't too raucous
but still sounded good. DynoMax Super Turbo mufflers did the trick. They are reverse flow Turbo
mufflers that have fiberglass packing against the shell to reduce reverberation and that tinny
sound you get with some other turbo mufflers.

The car cools very well. The Falcon Sprint radiator was designed for this engine and has transmission
cooler connections - making it just what we needed. With a front mounted electric fan and fan shroud,
the car never reaches 200F even idling in traffic on the hottest days. The fan automatically kicks on
at 190F and off again at 180F. Moving down the highway pushes enough air that the fan seldom comes on.
Idling around Ocean City on a warm day with the top down heated the driver more than the motor. I
believe the holes in the fender wells allow sufficent airflow for all of this to work as well as it
does.

Is Larry still depressed? Take a look at that smile and you have the answer.